A Canadian pilot is trying to claim the Boeing 737MAX has caused career damage, emotional and mental stress. He claims Boeing demonstrated “reckless indifference and conscious disregard for the flying public” in the development of the plane.

Presumably he migrated from the 737 Next Gen to the 737MAX meaning gaining type certification of the outgoing model would not be a stretch meaning career damage would be limited, especially given that Boeing forecasts the need for 790,000 new pilots out to 2037.

The lawsuit also contends the FAA and Boeing colluded in “an unprecedented cover-up of the known design flaws of the MAX”

It should be quite disconcerting for a pilot to claim mental stress in this way given the role requires nerves of steel at important times. This is not to criticize those with legitimate mental health issues but this class action seems more like The Simpsons episode where everybody ends up suing everybody.

The stress from flying domestic routes in Canada is not the same as the stress of flying a cargo plane out of Bagram Air Force base where insurgents fire surface to air missiles.

Is it realistic to think the 400 pilots who supposedly intend to join the class action have all suffered from the same trauma?

The details of the Rotherham grooming gang scandal was tabulated in an independent inquiry looking at the problem between 1997-2013 showing the extent of the cover up. The table above shows the actions taken after 157 complaints about child grooming in Rotherham were made to the South Yorkshire Police since 2013. The Inquiry tabulates a case of a father being arrested for trying to get his daughter out of a rape den. A 12yo girl was raped in a park then doused in gasoline and threatened with being lit if she said anything about what has happened. The sad thing is that these gangs are wide spread – Rotherham, Rochdale, Newcastle, Bristol, Aylesbury, Oxford, Peterborough, Keighley, Newham, Leeds, Bradford, Telford, Sheffield and London. The report discusses how the gangs transfer the children within the ‘safe houses; in the network to keep the industry clandestine.

The Inquiry was given a list of 988 children known to children’s social care, or the Police. 51 were current cases and 937 historic. It read 66 case files in total. It took a randomised sample of 19 current and 19 historic cases. In 95% of the files sampled, there was clear evidence that the child had been a victim of sexual exploitation. Only two children (5%) were at risk of being exploited rather than victims. From the random samples, we concluded that it was very probable that a high proportion of the 988 children were victims.

Taking all these sources together, the Inquiry concluded that at least 1,400 children were sexually exploited between 1997 and 2013. This is likely to be a conservative estimate of the true scale of the problem. It was unable to assess the numbers of other children who may have been at risk of exploitation, or those who were exploited but not known to any agency. This includes some who were forced to witness other children being assaulted and abused.

The responses by the authorities were absolutely insane. Take some of the following examples from the report:

“We read cases where a child was doused in petrol and threatened with being set alight, children who were threatened with guns, children who witnessed brutally violent rapes and were threatened that they would be the next victim if they told anyone. Girls as young as 11 were raped by large numbers of male perpetrators, one after the other. One said, “What’s the point… I might as well be dead.”

“In two of the cases we read, fathers tracked down their daughters and tried to remove them from houses where they were being abused, only to be arrested themselves when police were called to the scene. In a small number of cases (which have already received media attention) the victims were arrested for offences such as breach of the peace or being drunk and disorderly, with no action taken against the perpetrators of rape and sexual assault against children.”

“One child who was being prepared to give evidence received a text saying the perpetrator had her younger sister and the choice of what happened next was up to her. She withdrew her statements. At least two other families were terrorised by groups of perpetrators, sitting in cars outside the family home, smashing windows, making abusive and threatening phone calls. On some occasions child victims went back to perpetrators in the belief that this was the only way their parents and other children in the family would be safe. In the most extreme cases, no one in the family believed that the authorities could protect them.”

The Inquiry listed what had happened to these girls, aged as young as 11, after being discovered. It is shocking beyond belief:

“Child A (2000) was 12 when the risk of sexual exploitation became known. She was associating with a group of older Asian men and possibly taking drugs. She disclosed having had intercourse with 5 adults. Two of the adults received police cautions after admitting to the Police that they had intercourse with Child A. Child A continued to go missing and was at high risk of sexual exploitation. A child protection case conference was held. It was agreed by all at the conference that Child A should be registered. However, the CID representative argued against the category of sexual abuse being used because he thought that Child A had been ‘100% consensual in every incident’. This was overruled, with all others at the case conference demonstrating a clear understanding that this was a crime and a young child was not capable of consenting to the abuse she had suffered. She was supported appropriately once she was placed on the child protection register.”

“Child F (2006) was a victim of serious sexual abuse when she was a young child. She was groomed for sexual exploitation by a 27-year-old male when she was 13. She was subjected to repeated rapes and sexual assaults by different perpetrators, none of whom were brought to justice. She repeatedly threatened to kill herself and numerous instances of serious self-harm were recorded in the case file, including serious overdoses and trying to throw herself in front of cars. Social workers worked to protect Child F after she was referred by the Police. There was good cooperation between children’s social care services, the Police, Risky Business and acute hospital services, where doctors were seriously concerned about her because of the number and seriousness of hospital admissions over such a short time, many associated with serious drug misuse and self-harm. There was evidence in the file of social workers, frontline managers and Risky Business workers doing everything possible to help Child F. She was eventually placed in secure care, where she stayed for several months. During this time she was kept safe and a process of therapeutic intervention began.”

“Child H (2008) was 11 years old when she came to the attention of the Police. She disclosed that she and another child had been sexually assaulted by adult males. When she was 12, she was found drunk in the back of a car with a suspected CSE (child sexual exploitation) perpetrator, who had indecent photos of her on his phone. Risky Business became involved and the Locality Team did an initial assessment and closed the case. Her father provided Risky Business with all the information he had been able to obtain about the details of how and where his daughter had been exploited and abused, and who the perpetrators were. This information was passed on to the authorities. Around this time, there were further concerns about her being a victim of sexual exploitation. She was identified as one of a group of nine children associating with a suspected CSE perpetrator. Her case had not been allocated by children’s social care. The Chair of the Strategy meeting expressed concern about her and considered she needed a child protection case conference. This does not appear to have been held. Three months later, the social care manager recorded on the file that Child H had been assessed as at no risk of sexual exploitation, and the case was closed. Less than a month later, she was found in a derelict house with another child, and a number of adult males. She was arrested for being drunk and disorderly (her conviction was later set aside) and none of the males were arrested. Child H was at this point identified as being at high risk of CSE. Risky Business, social care workers and the Police worked to support Child H and her father and she was looked after for a period. She suffered a miscarriage while with foster carers. Her family moved out of the area and Child H returned home. Some of the perpetrators were subsequently convicted.”

Last week CM wrote about crime in London and how it has ballooned in recent years. A day after that it was revealed that London had a higher number of murders than New York. A 78-yo London pensioner was arrested after a person broke into his house and in the act of self defence the burglar was wounded and later died. So the criminal has more rights than the person exercising self defence. A father trying to save a daughter from being groomed gets arrested.

Yet political correctness and decades of turning a blind eye by the police allowed well documented cases of sexual grooming of children continue. A comedian that taught his girlfriend’s dog to do a Nazi salute faces a 12 month jail term tomorrow under the accusation of ‘hate speech’. Despite the tasteless nature of the joke do we think a comedian or a child rapist should be prioritized for prosecution? For all of the authorities meeting with senior social media heads to clamp down on ‘free speech’ when they could equally use those technologies and laws to capture texts and pornographic pictures of those people under suspicion of sexually exploiting children?

This is what the Inquiry had to say about the Police:

“We deal with the response of South Yorkshire Police at some length throughout this report. While there was close liaison between the Police, Risky Business and children’s social care from the early days of the Risky Business project, there were very many historic cases where the operational response of the Police fell far short of what could be expected. The reasons for this are not entirely clear. The Police had excellent procedures from 1998, but in practice these appear to have been widely disregarded….We were contacted by someone who worked at the Rotherham interchange in the early 2000s. He described how the Police refused to intervene when young girls who were thought to be victims of CSE were being beaten up and abused by perpetrators. According to him, the attitude of the Police at that time seemed to be that they were all ‘undesirables’ and the young women were not worthy of police protection.”

The Council was no better:

“In 2004-2005, a series of presentations on CSE were first made to councillors and then other relevant groups and agencies, led by the external manager of Risky Business, from Youth Services. The presentations were unambiguous about the nature and extent of the problem…In 2006, a Conservative councillor requested a meeting with the Council Leader at which he expressed his concerns about CSE. This had come to his attention via constituents. He told the Inquiry that the Council Leader advised him the matters were being dealt with by the Police and requested that he did not raise them publicly…

…Interviews with senior members revealed that none could recall the issue ever being discussed in the Labour (Party) Group until 2012. Given the seriousness of the subject, the evidence available, and the reputational damage to the Council, it is extraordinary that the Labour Group, which dominated the Council, failed to discuss CSE until then. Some senior members acknowledged that that was a mistake. Asked if they should have done things differently, they thought that as an administration they should have tackled the issues ‘head on’, including any concerns about ethnic issues.”

We could go on and on about the evidence discovered about the ‘Asian’ background of a majority of the perpetrators and how political correctness has allowed 1,000s of young girls’ lives have been destroyed because of the silence of the authorities. This is just one town. Without a doubt the ‘grooming industry’ operates in similar ways across the UK. The Inquiry found that taxi companies operated as part of the grooming gangs. It shouldn’t matter who commits the crimes or what their background is – it should matter how justice is served as a community that holds common decency as values. Even more importantly that law enforcement and the judiciary prosecute in a manner that sets an example such that it will never be tolerated.

All the above looks like appeasment, cowardice and a coordinated effort to hush up one of the most shameful periods in UK history. This is only the beginning. As the famous saying goes, “In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”